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John Bolton

John Bolton has not yet taken up his position as President Bone Spurs National Security Advisor but I have read numerous reports that he is an uber-hawk who has, in the past, advocated bombing both Iran and North Korea. This raises very serious concerns since Trump has voiced similar ideas in the past.

There is a very good chance that Trump will withdraw from the treaty with Iran under which Iran agreed to stop developing nuclear weapons in return for which the United States would drop trade sanctions against Iran. Oddly enough such a withdrawal will have very little effect. This is because the European Union is also a party to that treaty and I can guarantee that EU will not also withdraw. That means that the primary effect of a US withdrawal would be a slight disruption of the Iranian economy as they shift the small amount of trade they do with the US, 137 million dollars in 2017, to the EU which would result in a small loss of jobs in the US.

John Bolton, however, would also have us bomb Iran and possibly invade Iran. An invasion of Iran would be a bigger disaster than Iraq, but the the Boltons of the world don’t learn from their mistakes they double down on them instead. Aside from the fact that it would be a very bad idea to bomb Iran it would be an act of war and the Constitution gives Congress sole authority to declare war. The founding fathers explicitly explained why they did that. They did not want a single individual, specifically the President, to be able to take the country to war. This means that bombing Iran without prior congressional authorization would be a blatant violation of the constitution worthy of impeachment.

Next, North Korea. Not too long ago there were leaks coming out of the White House that Trump was considering the idea of bombing North Korean nuclear production facilities to give them ‘a bloody nose’ and thus discourage them from continuing further development of nuclear weapons. I have all of the same objections to bombing North Korea as I mentioned regarding the possible bombing of Iran. But there is a further complication with North Korea. There is no peace treaty with North Korea. What was signed on 27 July, 1953 was an armistice agreement which has held for over 64 years. Bombing North Korea would be a serious violation of that armistice and would have the potential of restarting the Korean War. I think the odds of the Korean War restarting are rather low, mainly because of China. China is still a communist dictatorship as it was in 1953, but China is now much more economically developed and much more involved in world trade. As such they would have much more to lose than in 1953, but both China and North Korea would probably feel the need to demonstrate to the United Sates that US cannot expect to violate the armistice without repercussions. I do not know what those repercussions would be but with two people as unstable and unpredictable as Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un it would be a very tense and dangerous situation.

Where would bombing either Iran or North Korea without congressional authorization go on the list of impeachable offenses that Trump has already committed? While blatant corruption is bad, as long as it does not establish a precedent for future presidents it will cause no long term damage, except, of course, to the reputation of the United States. Similarly with obstruction of justice, while Trump has tried to obstruct justice, he has not succeeded in doing so and if he would actually do something like fire Robert Mueller the repercussions would be enough to deter future presidents. Oddly enough I do not think that getting away with collusion with the Russians would be a problem for the future because I don’t believe there will be a future president with as many financial ties to foreign countries as Trump. But getting American military personnel unnecessarily killed and wounded would put bombing either Iran or North Korea without congressional authorization right at the top of the list. The American people are sick and tired of unnecessary wars and neither Iran or North Korea are serious threats to the US.

So, if you agree with what I said above, I would urge you to go to the websites for your congressman and both senators and leave them a message saying that you object to any bombing of Iran or North Korea without congressional authorization and also that you would object to any such authorization.

Now, I think that there is a very real possibility that that Bolton won’t last long enough to cause real problems because Bolton is very much a hardliner regarding Russia. I don’t know what strings the Russians have attached to Trump but I cannot imagine they like the idea of a hardliner vis-a-vis Russia as National Security Advisor. I think what will happen is that Bolton will become the next NSA but that he will very quickly start to clash with Trump over a number of issues but specifically Russia. As soon as such clashes become known to the public, and this White House leaks like a sieve, Trump will end up firing Bolton. Oddly enough, by having Russia pulling Trump’s strings to get Bolton fired they would be doing us a favor. Such is life under President Bone Spurs.